All thanks to my Girlfriend
I was born autistic, but I wasn't diagnosed until I became an adult. With co-morbid ADHD (combined type), this made life a lot harder than it needed to be.
Unbeknownst to me and my family, this was most likely the cause of all the bullying I went through since kindergarten. Because I have no intellectual impairment, no one noticed my struggles. I was also born female and that probably factored in to my lack of a diagnosis too.
Things only got noticable in my sophomore year of high school- when I almost failed a rigorous course. From then on, I started to notice odd behaviors of mine that no one else did. But my family just thought I was lazy. I got no help.
Despite the lack of help, I somehow managed to graduate with honors. But thanks to the suffering school has caused me, I might not ever go to college. I took a 'year off' after high school.
In the fall of that year, I made an online friend who would turn out to help me so much and even become my girlfriend. It was around the time I started questioning whether or not I'm autistic. She, as a diagnosed autistic person, told me that a lot of behaviors I was concerned about were things she did as a result of her autism. Thanks to her, I asked my doctor about testing.
Spring of 2018, I finally got in to testing and in the summer, got my diagnoses. Unfortunately, as I'm an adult, there wasn't much help around. Aside from the solace getting an answer gave me, things didn't improve.
That was until spring of 2019, when I found a speech therapist in my city that works with adults. I'm still in their care now and it's been amazing. I've grown leaps and bounds since I was first diagnosed. And it hasn't even been that long. Thanks to them, I can now bake and talk to people without sounding rude and have a non-monotone voice and even call people on the phone.
I hope by the time I'm out of their care, I'm ready and able to start a support group for other autistic adults like me to help each other and to help parents of autistic children understand how to better help their child.
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